Let me start by making my position clear: I don't like any religion. I think religion was a way of explaining the World before science helped us to understand it. Let me also be clear: I think those that openly mock Christianity while avoiding other religions are cowardly hypocrites.
But here's my main problem: it's gone too far. Atheist authors like Sam Harris have nuanced arguments and are very careful not to blur the lines between an ideology and its followers. I feel Sam is far too dismissive as to the effects of Western foreign policy and that he overestimates the honourable intentions of the West, but he was right about Charlie Hebdo, was right about the Paris attacks and continues to be right about most things at a macro level.
The problem is that now we have several other new atheists/alt-righters who have jumped on the bandwagon. On the Christian side, you have Milo who is almost less dangerous due to the fact that people don't seem to take him seriously, especially as he admits to being a provocateur. To a lesser extent, this also applies to Steven Crowder. The former both being Christians, you then have secular/atheist Jews like Gad Saad and Dave Rubin. The former is a nasty bully who was quick to accuse me of anti-antisemitism when I questioned some of his posts. Add in the fact that he's recently talked about merchandise featuring his nickname 'the Gadfather' and you can see success has gone to his head. Just look how he publishes the profiles of people he claims trolls him (Gad's definition of 'troll' seems to be 'disagree with') when he knows, or ought to know, the result will be a witch hunt. Harris and Crowder have discouraged their followers from engaging in any kind of witch hunt as a comparison.
Rubin seems like a nice guy, but I really don't feel he's well informed enough (as Harris clearly is) to really bring us anything new. Indeed, choosing, and openly praising, a thug like Tommy Robinson was a poor choice from Crowder, Saad and Rubin. None of them had done proper research on who this man really is. At best, Robinson is a fantasist who's convinced he is an 'enemy of the state'. At worst, he's a nasty bigot for reasons we'll come to later. It doesn't mean he shouldn't be on their show, but they never challenged him.
My main gripe with these newer new atheists (but not with Harris) is their failure to realise that life, and religion, is complicated. Harris recognises that most Muslims, like most Christians, are very mildly religious. He realises, that only a minority (though it is a rather large minority) are Islamists and that the others are just normal people. For some of the others, especially Gad Saad, the difference between committing crime in the name of a religion and committing crime (that MAY have some religious/cultural element loosely connected to it) has been blurred. His followers have told me to read the Koran, but unless a criminal uses religion to justify his actions, how can we blame religion? It would be the equivalent of reading through the Bible to find a reason why a Christian committed a crime. If they don't seek the justification, it shouldn't be attributed to them. There are a myriad of factors as to why crime is committed, and although I don't discount religion, I feel a creeping bigotry coming in so that we'll eventually arrive at the stage where we say Muslim=Criminal. Tommy Robinson is almost at this stage now which is why I think he's a bigot.
Anyway, I will continue to respect and read Harris (and Dawkins of course) but I can't help feel that the whole thing has become a back-slapping club with no guests to openly challenge views.
